Micromegas and Other Short Fictions (Penguin ed.)

by Voltaire

  THE SAVAGE: I have no idea; I have never seen it.

  THE GRADUATE: Incidentally, do you believe animals are machines?

  THE SAVAGE: They seem to me to be machines with organs, possessed of feelings and memory.

  THE GRADUATE: And what about you yourself, what do you think you possess, that is superior to the beasts?

  THE SAVAGE: An infinitely superior memory, many more ideas, and, as I have already said, a tongue which forms incomparably more sounds than those of animals; more versatile hands, and the faculty of laughter with which an all-powerful rational Being has endowed me.

  THE GRADUATE: And, may I ask, how do you come to have all this? And of what nature is your mind? How does your soul animate your body? Do you think all of the time? Do you have free will?

  THE SAVAGE: All these questions! You ask me how I come to possess what God has deigned to give to man: it’s as if you asked me how I was born. It must follow that, since I was born a man, I have those attributes which constitute man, as a tree has a bark, roots and leaves. You would have me know what is the nature of my mind: I have not taken it upon myself to know this. How my soul animates my body? I am no better instructed in that respect. It seems to me that one needs to see the workings of a watch to decide how it tells the time. You ask me if I think continually. No; sometimes I have half-thoughts, as when I make out objects vaguely from a distance; sometimes I have clearer ideas, as when I see an object from close up and distinguish it better; sometimes I have no thoughts at all, as when I close my eyes and see nothing. Then you ask me if my will is free. I do not understand you at all; these are things which you know, doubtless; you will do me the honour of explaining them to me.

  THE GRADUATE: Ah! Indeed, yes, I have studied all these matters; I could speak of them to you for a month without drawing breath, and you would understand nothing. Tell me a little more: do you know the difference between good and evil, between justice and injustice? Do you know what is the best form of government, or the best religion? Are you familiar with the rights of man, with public law, or civil law, or canon law? Or the names of the first man and woman who populated America? Do you know why it rains on the sea, and why you have no beard?

  THE SAVAGE: Truly, sir, you take advantage of the admission I have made to possessing a better memory than the animals; I have trouble even in remembering your questions. You speak about good and evil, justice and injustice; it seems to me that whatever gives us pleasure without doing harm to others is both very good and perfectly just; that what does harm to others without giving us pleasure is abominable; and that what gives us pleasure while harming others is good for us at the time, but highly dangerous for ourselves and very bad for others.

  THE GRADUATE: And it is with these maxims that you live together in society?

  THE SAVAGE: Yes, with our relatives and our neighbours. Without a great deal of effort and troubles, we persist calmly to a hundred years of age; some of us even reach one hundred and twenty; after which our bodies fertilize the earth which has nourished them.

  THE GRADUATE: You seem to me to have a good head; I should like to turn it around. Let us dine together; after which we shall begin to philosophize with method.

  Second Dialogue

  THE SAVAGE: I have now swallowed food which disagrees with me, although I have a strong stomach; you have made me eat when I was no longer hungry, and drink when I was no longer thirsty; my legs are not as firm under me as they were before dinner, my head feels heavier, my ideas are no longer so clear. Never in my own country have I felt this diminution of myself. Here the more one puts into one’s body, the more one loses one’s being. Please tell me, what is the cause of this nuisance?

  THE GRADUATE: I shall explain. First of all, I know nothing as to what is happening with your legs; but the doctors know, and you can address yourself to them. As to what is happening to your head, I know very well. Listen: the soul, occupying no place, is seated in the pineal gland, or in the corpus callosum, in the centre of the head. The animal spirits which begin in the stomach rise up to the soul, which they cannot touch because they are matter and it is not. Now, since they cannot act one upon the other, this means that the soul receives their impression; and since it is a simple substance, and consequently cannot feel any change, this means that it changes, becomes heavy and sluggish, when one has over-eaten; which explains the fact that many a great man sleeps after dinner.

  THE SAVAGE: What you say seems very ingenious and profound; but do me the honour of giving me an explanation within my reach.

  THE GRADUATE: I have told you all that can be said on this important subject, but to accommodate you I shall enlarge a little; let us proceed by degrees; are you aware that this is the best of all possible worlds?

  THE SAVAGE: What! Is it impossible for the Infinite Being to create something better than what we see before us?

  THE GRADUATE: Certainly, and what we see before us happens to be the best there is. It is perfectly true that human beings pillage and slaughter one another; but always while praising equity and gentleness. In times past twelve million or so of you Americans were massacred: but only to make the rest of you see reason. A mathematician has calculated that since a certain Trojan War, of which you are ignorant, up to the War of Acadia, which you do know about,1 there have been killed in pitched battle at least five hundred and fifty-five million six hundred and fifty thousand men, not counting the women and little children crushed to death in cities reduced to ashes. But this was all for the public good. The four or five thousand cruel illnesses to which mankind is prey make one realize the price of health; and the crimes which cover the earth set off wonderfully the merit of devout men, among whose number I count myself. You can see that all this works for the best, at least as far as I am concerned.

  Now everything could not exist in such perfection were the soul not located in the pineal gland; because, well… But let’s proceed step by step: what notion do you have of the law, of justice and injustice, of the beautiful, of Plato’s τó καλòυ?

  THE SAVAGE: But, sir, going step by step you speak to me of a hundred things at once.

  THE GRADUATE: Such is the way of conversation. Tell me, then, who made the laws of your country?

  THE SAVAGE: Public interest.

  THE GRADUATE: Those are eloquent words. For us there are none which carry greater force; but what do you mean by them, tell me?

  THE SAVAGE: I mean, that those who had coconut trees and corn forbade others to touch them, and those who had none were obliged to work for the right to eat of them. Everything I have learned in my country and in yours has taught me that there is no other meaning to ‘the spirit of laws’.

  THE GRADUATE: But women, Monsieur Savage, what about women?

  THE SAVAGE: Women? Ah! They please me greatly when they are beautiful and gentle. They are far superior to coconut trees; they are a fruit which we allow no one else to touch: no one has any more right to take my wife from me than to take my child. There are, it is said, people who find such practices acceptable – but they are their own masters, and everyone must do with his possessions as he sees fit.

  THE GRADUATE: But what of inheritances, partitions, heirs, collaterals?

  THE SAVAGE: There has to be inheritance. I can no longer own my field when I am buried in it: I leave it to my son; and if I have two sons, they share it. I understand that among your people, in many places, the laws leave everything to the eldest, and nothing to the younger sons: it is self-interest which has dictated such a bizarre law; presumably the elder sons created it for themselves, or else the fathers wanted the elder sons to be dominant.

  THE GRADUATE: What, in your opinion, are the best laws?

  THE SAVAGE: Those where the interests of my fellow-men have been consulted.

  THE GRADUATE: And where does one find such laws in practice?

  THE SAVAGE: Nowhere, from what I hear.

  THE GRADUATE: Tell me, where do your people think they came from? Who does one think populated
America?

  THE SAVAGE: We believe that God did.

  THE GRADUATE: That is not an answer. I ask you where did your first ancestors come from?

  THE SAVAGE: From the land where our first trees came from. It seems to me a quaint jest on the part of you Europeans to claim that we can have nothing without you: we have just as much right to think of ourselves as your ancestors as you to think of yourselves as ours.

  THE GRADUATE: What an obstinate savage you are!

  THE SAVAGE: And what a prattling graduate!

  THE GRADUATE: Hold on there, my dear savage! One more question: in Guyana do you believe that one must kill those who are not of the same opinion as yourself?

  THE SAVAGE: Yes; as long as you eat them afterwards.

  THE GRADUATE: It is you who are the jester. And the papal bull Unigenitus,2 what do you make of that?

  THE SAVAGE: I’m making off.

  Dialogue between Ariste

  and Acrotal

  ACROTAL:1 Oh for the good old days, when students at the university, bearded to the last man, battered to death the mathematician Ramus2 and dragged his body naked and bleeding to make honourable amends before the door of each and every college!

  ARISTE: So this Ramus must have been an abominable person? He committed enormities?

  ACROTAL: Most certainly. He wrote against Aristotle, and was suspected of even worse. It is a shame they didn’t batter Charron3 to death while they were about it, who took upon himself to write about wisdom; or your Montaigne,4 who dared to reason and make jests. All those who reason are a plague on the state.

  ARISTE: People who reason badly can be unbearable; however, I do not see that one should hang a fellow for a few false syllogisms; and it seems to me that the men whom you mention reasoned fairly well.

  ACROTAL: So much the worse. That’s what makes them the most pernicious.

  ARISTE: In what respect, pray? Have you ever seen a philosopher bring war or plague or famine to a country? Bayle, for example, whom you abuse so virulently – has he ever undermined the Dutch dikes in order to drown the inhabitants,5 as it is said one of our great ministers, who was no philosopher, contemplated doing?6

  ACROTAL: Would to God this Bayle had been drowned, along with his Dutch heretics! Has there ever been a more abominable creature? He expounds things with such obnoxious accuracy; he places before our eyes both sides of a question with such craven impartiality; he writes with such intolerable clarity that he enables people who have only common sense to judge and even to doubt for themselves. This cannot be borne, and for my part I admit that I go into a holy rage when anyone speaks of this man and his like.

  ARISTE: I don’t think they ever intended to anger you… But where are you off to now in such a hurry?

  ACROTAL: To Monsignor Bardo-Bardi. I have been requesting an audience for the past two days; but he is always either dallying with his page-boy or with the Signora Buona-Roba; I have so far been unable to have the honour of speaking with him.

  ARISTE: He is at this moment at the opera. What have you to tell him that is so pressing?

  ACROTAL: I wanted to ask him to bring his influence to bear in the burning of a little priest7 who has been insinuating the ideas of Locke amongst us – an English philosopher, if you please! Can you imagine a worse horror?

  ARISTE: Well! And what, pray, are the horrific notions of this Englishman?

  ACROTAL: How do I know! That our ideas do not come from us, for example; that God, who is master of everything, can bestow ideas and sensations upon whomever he chooses; that we know neither the essence nor the elements of matter; that men do not think all the time; that a completely drunk man who falls asleep does not have clear ideas in his sleep; and a hundred other such impertinences.

  ARISTE: Well! If your little priest, the disciple of Locke, is so ill-advised as not to believe that a sleeping drunk can have thought processes – is that a reason to persecute him? What evil has he done? Has he conspired against the state? Has he preached theft, calumny or homicide from the pulpit? Tell me, between the two of us, has a philosopher ever caused the slightest trouble to society?

  ACROTAL: Never, I admit.

  ARISTE: Are they not for the most part solitary people? Are they not poor, without patronage, without support? And is it not partly for these reasons that you persecute them, because you know you can oppress them so easily?

  ACROTAL: It is true that formerly there were hardly any to be found among this sect except citizens without any credit, such as Socrates, Pomponazzi, Erasmus, Bayle, Descartes. But now philosophy has risen into the courts and even ascended the throne; everyone prides themselves on their reason (except in certain countries where we have managed to restore order). That is what is truly baneful, and that is why we exert ourselves to exterminate at least those philosophers who have neither fortune, influence, nor honours in this world, since we cannot avenge ourselves on those who do.

  ARISTE: Avenge yourselves? For what, may I ask? Have these poor creatures ever coveted your posts, your prerogatives, your fortunes?

  ACROTAL: No; but they despise us, if the truth be known; and they mock us from time to time, which we can never forgive.

  ARISTE: That is of course bad, to mock you: one must never mock anyone; but pray tell me, why has no one ever scoffed at the laws and magistrature in any country, whereas you are scoffed at so mercilessly, according to what you tell me?

  ACROTAL: That is precisely what makes our blood boil; for we are well above the laws.

  ARISTE: Which is precisely why so many honest men have turned you to ridicule. You would have those laws founded on universal reason – which the Greeks named the Daughters of Heaven – give way to all kinds of opinions which caprice both creates and destroys. Can you not see that what is just, clear and self-evident is universally respected for all time, and that wild fancies cannot always secure the same veneration?

  ACROTAL: Let us leave aside laws and judges, and concentrate on philosophers: there can be no doubt that formerly they uttered just as many idiocies as we do; therefore we must rise up against them, if only for reasons of professional rivalry.

  ARISTE: Several of them have undoubtedly uttered idiotic remarks, because philosophers are only men; but their fancies have never kindled civil war, such as yours have triggered more than once.

  ACROTAL: Which is what is admirable about us. Is there anything finer than to shake the world by means of a few arguments? Do we not resemble the ancient sorcerers who summoned up tempests with words? We should be masters of the world were it not for these rascally intellectuals.

  ARISTE: Well, tell them, if you like, that they have no intellect; show them that their reason is corrupt; if they ridicule you, why not ridicule them back? But I beg you to spare this poor disciple of Locke whom you wanted to burn alive; do you not see, dear Doctor, that burning is no longer the fashion?

  ACROTAL: You are right; we must find a new way of silencing these petty philosophers.

  ARISTE: Believe me, keep silent yourselves; have nothing more to do with argufying; become honest men; exercise compassion; stop looking for evil where it does not exist, and it will no longer be found where it does exist.

  The Education of Daughters

  MÉLINDE: Eraste has departed, and I see you are plunged into deep reverie. He is young, handsome, witty, rich and amiable, so I forgive you your daydreaming.

  SOPHRONIE: He is everything you say, I admit.

  MÉLINDE: And what’s more, he loves you.

  SOPHRONIE: I admit that too.

  MÉLINDE: I think you are not insensible to his charms.

  SOPHRONIE: That is the third admission, which my friendship for you has no fear of conceding.

  MÉLINDE: Let us add a fourth; I can see that you will soon be married to Eraste.

  SOPHRONIE: I can tell you, in the same confidence, that I shall never marry him.

  MÉLINDE: What! Can your mother oppose so presentable a match?

  SOPHRONIE: No, she allows me the free
dom to choose; I love Eraste, but I shall never marry him.

  MÉLINDE: And what reason can you have for this tyranny over yourself?

  SOPHRONIE: The fear of being tyrannized. Eraste is a man of intelligence, but he is imperious and caustic; he has graces, but soon he will set them to work on others than myself: I have no wish to become the rival of one of those women who sell their charms, who cast a glow upon the purchaser, who outrage half the town by their splendour and ruin the other half by their example, and who triumph in public at the expense of an honest woman reduced to weeping in solitude. I have a strong inclination for Eraste, but I have studied his character; he goes too much against my inclination. I want to be happy; I shall not be so with Eraste. I shall marry Ariste, whom I esteem, and whom I hope one day to love.

  MÉLINDE: You are remarkably sensible for your age. There are few girls whom the fear of a troubled future prevents from embracing an agreeable present. How can you have such self-command?